


sometimes it takes a lifetime

by hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Drugs, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8848870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huddersandhiddles/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: Fifty-five years of Sherlock's Christmases





	1. Age 5

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are again with another Christmas fic challenge. (Last year's challenge can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5330228/chapters/12307400) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8704453/chapters/19957579).) This time though, we're just doing 12 days of Christmas writing instead of 25. You can find the full prompt list [here](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com/post/154205774739/its-that-time-of-year-again-starting-december) if you're curious or want to join in. 
> 
> I've decided this time around to try for one cohesive story. I have a loose framework for it, but it's a bit less planned than what I usually like to write. We'll see how it goes. Lol. 
> 
> Not beta'd or Britpicked. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 1 prompt:  
> Letters to Santa

_Dear Father Christmas,_

_Are you a real person? Myc says you’re not, but Thomas says you are. Thomas is my friend. I don’t think he likes me anymore though. Myc is my brother. He’s mean, so if you are real, you shouldn’t bring him any presents._

_I know I didn’t write to you before, but I just found out about you from Thomas last week. He said you bring him the best gifts on Christmas morning. He said you bring presents for all the children who are good. I told him that my Christmas gifts are from Mummy and Father, and he said that I’m weird and that nobody thinks I’m good and that’s why you don’t bring me anything. Is that true? I promise that I do try to be good but sometimes bad things still happen. I didn’t mean to set the kitchen on fire. I was trying to do an ~~esp~~ experiment. And I found that bird skull in the garden. I didn’t know it would make Mummy scream. And I didn’t hurt it, I swear. I just wanted to look at it because it was interesting. _

_I wanted to write you this letter to tell you that I am sorry for those things and I’m sorry that I’m not normal like the other boys. I will try to be better. If I promise to work harder for the rest of the year, will you bring me some presents? Thomas says you bring the best ones. He says you bring him things that his mum and dad wouldn’t give him. And there are some thing I want this year, but I know Mummy and Father would say no or that they can’t give me them so I thought maybe you could. If you can I would like_

_1\. A lab of my own where I can do experiments. Mummy said I can’t use the kitchen anymore after the fire, and I can’t do them in my bedroom either or I get in trouble._

_2\. I want to go on pirate adventures. I’ll be a good pirate though. I won’t steal treasure. I can sail around and find other pirates who steal treasure and make them walk the plank._

_3\. Cake. A whole bunch of them, if you can. Grandmere makes the best ones. She says it's cause they're made with love, but she doesn’t visit very much anymore. But if she sent me enough cakes that I could eat them for forever, I would be so happy. And I would even share with Myc because I promised you I would be good._

_4\. Could I have a better big brother too? Myc used to be fun, but now he’s away at school and he’s very serious when he comes home. He doesn’t want to play pirates anymore, and he tells me I’m being too silly. And when I cry or I'm mad or I get too excited, he says I should grow up. But I’m already growing up as fast as I can, and he's still mean to me. So maybe you could bring me a better big brother._

_5\. Number five is the most important one. The one that I want the most. Even if you don’t bring me the other gifts, please try your hardest to bring me a friend. Not one like Thomas who kicks dirt on me and calls me names. I want a real friend. A forever friend. Can you make it someone else who likes looking at skulls and going on adventures? And someone who can help me when Colin tries to beat me up again. I want a friend who likes me as much as I like him and who will stay friends with me forever. Can you bring me that? You don't have to bring me lots of friends. I would be happy if I just had one. I would ~~prec~~ appreciate it very much. Thank you, Father Christmas._

_~~Sherlock Holmes~~ _

_William Sherlock Scott Holmes_

_(I thought I better put my real name. I wouldn’t want you to bring my gifts to the wrong Sherlock Holmes.)_


	2. Age 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 2 prompt:  
> Candy canes

Sherlock crawls out of bed at half-four, bleary-eyed and bed-headed. He slips on his warmest dressing gown and peeks out the sliver of open door before he carefully pushes it wide, tiptoeing past Mycroft’s bedroom. He sneaks past Mummy and Father’s, too, down the stairs, and away from the guest room where Aunt Violet and his cousin Samantha are staying during their visit. 

The house is dark and quiet and still in a way that Sherlock loves, and as he finds his way to the sitting room by muscle memory, it feels as if the night is holding its breath, watching and waiting for the possibility of  _ something _ to rattle from its depths. 

When his knees bump against the edge of the sofa, he pulls an old torch from his pocket and quietly presses the switch, illuminating the fireplace in a dim halo. The stockings are as full as they had been when he’d gone up to bed, gifts from Mummy and Father already tucked inside. The hearth and the floor show no signs of soot, no footprints, no indication that anyone has been creeping around in the dark.

He swings the beam of the torch around the room, looking for any sign that someone has been here at all. Across the floor. Along the walls. Over the plate of mince pies Samantha had insisted on leaving out, still untouched. 

But there, tucked into the corner just behind the tree, is a stack of gifts in unfamiliar wrapping, glittering crimson and cream in the torchlight, and hope flickers in Sherlock’s chest. 

_ Father Christmas is coming, _ Samantha had told him while they’d cleaned their teeth side by side before bed, and Sherlock had rolled his eyes. His own experiences with Father Christmas had been beyond disappointing. 

Once and only once, he had written a letter asking for his own tiny Christmas miracles, clinging desperately to the childish belief that a stranger would somehow deliver them. But he had woken on Christmas morning to find the usual bundle of gifts from his parents and his brother and relatives he barely knew, and no more. There had been no miracles for him. 

It had been a lesson he’d only needed to learn once.

And yet.

_ Father Christmas is coming, _ she had said, and Sherlock had been determined to ignore her, to insist that there is no such thing as Father Christmas. But here he is in the sitting room in the middle of the night because his curiosity couldn’t be satisfied with an eyeroll and a scoff. Because despite the fact that he knows there are no miracles, he has to see the evidence with his own eyes so that he can be certain.

And here’s it sits, a mound of evidence shrouded in unfamiliar, sparkling red and white paper, striped like candy canes. Five, six, maybe seven gifts, all neatly wrapped and tucked away behind the tree like a secret. A secret that hadn’t been there when Sherlock had gone to sleep, and he can’t quite help the way that possibility tingles in his fingertips and toes.

Because someone has been here.

But who?

He slips quietly across the room, careful to avoid the boards that creak and groan, and kneels beside the tree. The present on the top of the stack has a label right on top. Scrawled on it in a looping hand is  _ From: Father Christmas, To: Sherlock, _ and Sherlock’s heart thuds against his ribs.

_ Observe _ , he tells himself. Mycroft has been teaching him, and what better practice is there than a present, its contents all wrapped up and hidden from view. 

The box is about the size of a sheet of paper, no bigger, and no more than a couple of inches thick. He shakes it gently, bending his ear closer to better hear the way the contents slide. It’s a soft sound, something light. A gentle press against the top of the box reveals the way it caves, bowing inward with only gentle, pillowy resistance. Likely fabric then. Clothing of some kind. Not the kind of gift he’d hoped for. Not the kind he’d asked for, once, long ago.

Setting it aside, he finds the next gift has Samantha’s name on it. And the next. And the next, and he huffs in frustration.

The following gift is for him though, and Sherlock repeats his process. This one is smaller, and it doesn’t slide at all or bend when he pushes on the top of it. Feeling along the sides, however, he notices the way the paper gives just a little more on one side than it does the other, pressing in just a bit farther before hitting the surface. A book then, his fingers pushed against the pages rather than the spine.  _ Boring. _

He tosses it aside, disappointment buzzing in his ears, and reaches for the last parcel in the stack when he sees it. Hidden behind the last box is a bag, carefully stuffed with tissue paper. A bag means the gift must be irregularly shaped, and irregularly shaped gifts-- well, those are quite interesting, aren’t they? And Sherlock loves interesting things. They’re his favourite things in the entire world. 

So this gift, whatever it is, he already knows he’s going to love it, and he just can’t resist taking a peak. It’s cheating, he knows, going straight for the answer and not trying to deduce it first, but there’s only so much anticipation that he can take.

The first piece of tissue plucked from the bag reveals a small wooden post, rounded on the end. He pulls away two more pieces of tissue before he realizes it’s a mast. The mast of a ship, with a crow’s nest near the top. Heart-pounding, he all but rips the remaining tissue from the bag and shines his torch down inside. 

Light glints off the gold-trimmed edges of a pirate ship, the Jolly Roger sail hanging limp without the wind to carry it, and Sherlock’s heart soars. A pirate ship. Father Christmas has brought him a pirate ship. 

He slips it free from the bag, just for a minute. Spins the tiny wheel. Adjusts the sail. Runs his fingers over the gilded name printed along the starboard side.  _ The Black Star. _ His very own pirate ship. A little later than he’d expected it perhaps, but a welcome gift nonetheless. 

Carefully, he puts it back in the bag, whispering promises to  _ The Black Star _ that he’ll see it again in the light of the morning, and buries it underneath the tissue once more. Setting it back in its place behind the tree, he nudges and bumps and adjusts the bag, trying to get it back into the same position it had been before, when the torchlight falls across the tag on the front. 

_ From: Father Christmas _

_ To: Samantha _

Samantha. This gift--this beautiful, perfect pirate ship practically built plank-by-plank out of Sherlock’s hopes and dreams--is for Samantha.

_ Stupid, _ he tells himself, echoing the words Mycroft so often throws his way.  _ You’re a stupid little boy. Of course it wasn’t for you. There is no Father Christmas. _

He barely manages to get the rest of the gifts re-stacked before the tears begin to fall, streaming hot and silent down his cheeks as he trudges back up the stairs to his room. He buries his face in his pillow and cries and cries, and when he finally falls asleep again, it’s not to visions of sugar plums, but to the echoing notes of sea shanties sung far off in a distance he can’t quite seem to reach.

 


	3. Age 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 3 prompt:  
> Family gatherings

The voices are cacophonous.

Mummy and Father, Mycroft, Aunt Violet, Samantha, Uncle Rudy, Grandmere, several family friends, and a couple of the more distant relations--there are more than two dozen people crammed into the house, swirling through the rooms in a riot of good cheer that Sherlock finds difficult to tune out. They gather in the kitchen and around the Christmas tree, in front of the fireplace and out in the garden, laughing and screeching and shouting in turns.

He can’t remember the last time there were this many people gathered here for Christmas--or for any other reason at all really--and it’s almost more noise than he can bear. All because Mycroft managed to sneak his way into some stupid government job.  _ We have to celebrate _ , Mummy had said, and now here they all are, boisterous and happy.  _ Tedious. _

Sherlock leaves them to their conversations and settles himself onto the sofa instead, pulling out an old chemistry text and losing himself in the comforting whispers of polyatomic ions and oxidation numbers, molar masses and balanced equations. 

Around him the day spins on, and the clash of voices fade blessedly into the background.

Until.

“Sherlock Holmes.” 

Mummy’s voice cuts sharply through a paragraph about salt crystallization in aqueous solutions, and Sherlock looks up from his book. “You are being rude to our guests. Put that book away. Now.” 

She glares at him until he closes the book with a snap and pushes himself to his feet, barely managing not to huff a sigh in irritation. “Stop being unsociable.” 

She gives him a shove toward the garden, where Mr Pearson is talking to Father, and Sherlock takes the unsubtle hint and joins them, only half-listening to old Mr Pearson’s complaints about his hip. And the weather. And the Labour Party. And Mrs Cunningham’s dogs.

When he’s lingered long enough to be polite and escape Mummy’s ire, he moves to the next group, stands there silently rubbing at the worn edges of the cuffs of his jumper to try to hide his fidgety discomfort. He moves to the next and the next, hovering around the fringes of conversations he couldn’t care less about.

It goes on for hours, no end anywhere in sight. Samantha whinges ceaselessly about missing out on a holiday to Saint-Tropez with her schoolmates. Mrs Cunningham’s daughter, Sarah, spins into a long diatribe about John Major. Mrs Cunningham herself needles him about being too thin, too peaky, too quiet, too bookish. 

On and on and on. The noise. The people.

Sherlock makes sounds of agreement or concern as is expected of him and moves on when the one-sided conversations grow too stilted, his interest too obviously ingenuine. 

He hates this. He hates the volume. He hates the awkwardness of small talk with people he doesn’t really know and doesn’t really care to find out more about. He hates the idiotic opinions and the winking, nudging jokes at his expense. He hates the  _ Isn’t it wonderful about Mycroft’s new position?  _ and the  _ He’s really making something of himself, you know  _ and the _ You could stand to learn a thing or two from his example. _

Frustration tugs at him, pulling at the corners of his mouth, digging at his spine. He knows these things. He knows that Mycroft is the better of them, the one everyone can be proud of. He knows he’s a disappointment. He knows he’s odd. He knows he’s not good at any of this kind of interaction--that’s why he doesn’t have friends. He doesn’t need the reminders. He knows. He’s always known.

But it’s Christmas, and isn’t Christmas supposed to be happy? Isn’t someone supposed to care about what he wants, about what would make him content? He knows that it’s childish to think that way, but he can’t help the part of him that wants to hold onto Christmas as something special, as a day away from the  _ freak_s and the remonstrations, as a single moment of respite from feeling like the butt of every joke and the target of every barb. Christmas isn’t supposed to be about everyone fawning over his ridiculous, self-important prat of a brother. It’s not supposed to be about everyone pointing out all of his flaws. It’s not supposed to be about all these hateful people and their hateful opinions and the hateful noise they make. 

All of it echoes, resonates, bounces violently off the inside of his skull. Giggling. Barking. Drawling. Whistling. Buzzing. Yelling. Babbling. Humming. Arguing. Talking. Talking. Talking. He just wants it all to stop.

“Chere.”

His grandmother’s face swims into view as Sherlock peels open his eyes, unable to remember squeezing them closed in the first place. Her hands wrap around his where he’s balled them into fists at his sides, his fingernails digging painfully into his palms.

“Chere,” she says again, softly, cradling his nickname on her tongue the way she has since he was a child. “Why don’t we go inside, no?”

He thinks he manages to nod, and either way she understands, leading him into the house and pressing him down gently into a chair in the kitchen. The wooden seat is cold through the thin wool of Sherlock’s trousers, and he focuses on it, on the way it leaches through the fabric and seeps into his skin, letting it soothe some of the irritation still shifting in his veins like sand.

Grandmere turns on the tap, not too much, not too loud, and returns to swipe a cool, wet flannel across his palms, clearing away the thin trickles of blood from the half-moon craters he’d dug there.

She speaks to him in hushed tones, like some wild thing she wants to tame. “You’re okay, Chere. You’re fine.” Sherlock would hate it if anyone else spoke to him like that, but Grandmere has always known just how to do this. How to be quiet but not condescending. How to be gentle without treating him like glass. “See,” she tells him. “Good as new.”

Mummy would try to make him explain what’s wrong, to put into words all the trembling anxiety rattling beneath his ribs. Father would want to have a talk with him about how important it is to not let himself get so distressed to begin with. But Grandmere, she doesn’t need to ask, doesn’t need to talk about it, doesn’t need to try to fix him somehow, and Sherlock has always loved her for that.

“Come now,” she says instead and waits for him to get to his feet. “Your mother wanted to save this Christmas cake for your brother to take back to London with him, but I think we can find a better use for it, can’t we?” 

She shoves two forks into his hand and snatches up the platter, turning for the door. Sherlock follows her out onto the front step, where she settles with a groan and motions for him to join her. Resting the platter carefully across their knees, she plucks a fork from his hand and digs right into the side of the cake. Sherlock can’t help but grin and carves out a bite for himself. 

Lifting her fork, she clinks it against Sherlock’s in an approximation of a toast. “Bon appetit!” He echoes the sentiment and shovels far too large a bite of cake into his mouth, swallowing down some of his disappointment, some of his self-loathing along with it.

It’s hard to be unhappy with the taste of Christmas cake on your tongue.

They stay there, sitting in comfortable silence, sharing their secret snack until they’re sick from the sweetness and the sun has dipped too low on the horizon to keep them warm.

When they finally rejoin the party, Mummy casts the pair of them a look that Grandmere shoots down with a glare of her own, and a giggle bubbles up in Sherlock’s belly. 

To be polite, he completes the circuit again, bouncing from group to group. Samantha compliments him on his jumper. Mr Pearson asks after his violin lessons. The conversations are still seemingly endless, but now Sherlock finds them a little more bearable, the noise a little less loud, the world a little less heavy on his shoulders. 

It’s not exactly a Christmas miracle, but for now, it’s enough.


	4. Age 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 prompt:  
> Fairy lights

The wind picks up as Sherlock cuts across the cricket field, and he buries his hands deeper in his coat pockets. He should have brought gloves, but he hadn’t thought to grab them in his haste to escape. 

Flatmates drunk on rum punch and end-of-term merriment, speakers crackling under the strain of too-loud synth-pop Christmas songs, fairy lights blazing in every window so bright and hot it’s like the flat is on fire--it’s more like something from Sherlock’s nightmares rather than the party everyone else thinks it to be. He’d tried to ignore it, to lock himself away in his room until they all finally left him alone, but he could still feel the pulse of the music through the walls, the electronic thump of the drumbeat reverberating in his chest until his breath, his thoughts, his own heartbeat felt forced into its bouncing, holiday rhythm and he’d had to get out. 

He picks up the pace, his long strides carrying him steadily away from the noise and the people and deeper into the blissful, blessed haven of midnight silence. Most of the other students have gone home already, eager to spend the holidays with their families and friends, so the streets and alleys and all of the buildings are perfectly deserted. 

At the entrance to the chemistry building, Sherlock tucks a hand inside his coat, ready to pull out the picks perpetually stashed in his inner pocket, but he finds the door already unlocked. 

_ Interesting. _

This time of night, this time of year, who else could possibly be here? He’s the only one who ever frequents the lab this late, far more at home locked up here amongst a sterile assortment of beakers and flasks than tucked into a quiet corner with someone whose name he barely knows, intoxicated with lust and holiday cheer. 

It’s why he’d come here after all: to be alone. 

And yet his heart beats a little faster because this is unexpected. A surprise. A tiny Christmas mystery for him to solve.

He slips inside the building, quietly latching the door behind him, and listens. There’s no music to indicate the typical weekend caretaker, though even he should have been gone hours ago. There are no half-whispered voices to indicate a break-in in progress. There’s no movement, no sound, nothing at all. 

The door could have been left unlocked by mistake, he reminds himself. But then the lights are on, too. It’s possible someone could have forgotten both, but the balance of probability is that someone really is here somewhere.

He glides down the hall, pressing his weight into the toes of his shoes to stop his footsteps from echoing quite so loudly in the empty space. At every corner he holds his breath, pausing to savour the possibility tingling down his thighs, wondering where he might find this mystery guest. 

But corridor after corridor is empty, and Sherlock’s curiosity stretches into a fluttering in his belly, a tickle in his chest. 

He turns another corner to find light spilling out into the corridor from a room down at the end, and his feet freeze midstep. 

His lab. Someone is using his lab.

Technically, yes, it’s the university’s lab, open to all students, but Sherlock has run the others off so frequently that it might as well be his own. No one uses it but him now. No one dares.

And yet here someone is, and indignation bristles through him, stiffening his spine, his curiosity tipping closer to the edge of contempt.

Quick, crisp footsteps echo off the walls as he stalks to the doorway and steps inside to find an unfamiliar young man bent over a microscope. 

“I’m almost done,” he says without lifting his head. 

Sherlock waits, seething, because how dare he, how dare he come into Sherlock’s lab. Touch his things. Move his slides. Use his microscope.

Long fingers twist the fine focus knob, and Sherlock can’t stand it any longer.

He clears his throat.

“I said-- Oh.” The stranger finally turns, eyes widening when they land on Sherlock. Sherlock glares back, a look that never fails to send his fellow students fleeing, stuttering insipid excuses that only further provoke Sherlock’s irritation. But this boy--this stubborn, heedless, exasperatingly unexplained boy--does something even more infuriating.

He smiles.

“Hello.”

“Who are you?” Sherlock demands, looking down his nose at the intruder. “What are you doing here?”

“Well that’s not very polite.” He stands and straightens, stretching his arms above his head to reveal a sliver of skin beneath his faded t-shirt. Sherlock stands silent, watching as he turns back and carefully tidies up--removing the slides from the stage, cleaning them with ethanol, placing them carefully back in their case. His movements are certain but delicate, clearly the result of careful habit, and the hard edge of distaste pressing against Sherlock’s diaphragm softens a little.

When everything is returned to its proper place, the boy faces Sherlock again with that same solicitous smile. “Better?”

Sherlock’s lips twitch, the word  _ yes _ almost slipping out of his mouth in spite of himself, but he manages to trap it before it slides free and simply raises an eyebrow instead.

The stranger steps closer, still smiling, and it’s slightly unnerving to be looked at that way, as if he were something worthy of interest.

“Forensic chemistry then?”

“How did--”

This time Sherlock can’t quite stop the words before they come out, but he bites off the end of them, swallowing against the rest of the question scratching at his throat. 

But the intruder answers as if he hadn’t stopped himself at all, nodding back toward the array of equipment in the corner of the lab. “HPLC readout for methylphenidate.”

“Who are you?” Sherlock asks again, thrown entirely off-kilter by this young man with his straight, white teeth and his careful hands and his sliver of bare skin that Sherlock definitely, definitely didn’t glance at when he stretched.

The boy’s grin widens as he steps even closer, pressing right in until he’s just at the edge of too close and Sherlock can see the flecks of honeyed gold in his chestnut eyes, sparkling with mirth. 

He reaches out for Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock flinches at the surprise of it. But the boy’s fingers are gentle, his palm warm, as he lifts Sherlock’s hand, turning it to expose his forearm. Digging in the pocket of his denims, he comes out with a biro and uncaps it with his teeth before pressing the nib to Sherlock’s skin.

Sherlock thinks he should pull away, twist his arm out of the stranger’s grasp, tell him that he doesn’t do… whatever it is that they’re doing here. But by the time he can translate thought into action, the biro is stashed away and the young man has let him go, already stepping around him toward the door. And even though he tells himself he doesn’t want to, Sherlock twists around to watch him leave. 

In the doorway he turns back, still grinning like he’s won some kind of prize. “Merry Christmas,” he offers with a wink. And then he’s gone, confident footsteps and a buoyantly hummed carol echoing in his wake.

Sherlock shakes his head and tries to clear away the strange encounter, to focus instead on getting out the equipment and supplies for the experiment he’d come here to conduct, but he can still feel the scratch of the biro against his skin, the curious itch of the ink calling to him louder and louder the harder he tries to silence it, until he can’t ignore it anymore and has to look, has to know what message this confident, unexpected, annoyingly enigmatic boy could have possibly left for him.

The bold, blue-black letters are sharp against his skin.  _ I’m your date, _ it says in careful print.  _ Next week. Same time. Same place. - Victor 01632 960867 _

And Sherlock laughs. He laughs because it’s brash and foolish and incredibly presumptuous. He laughs because no one has ever dared to be so bold as to ask him on a date. He laughs because even though he knows he won’t call, won’t come back next week, even though he goes to the sink and scrubs away the letters and the numbers, leaving his arm flushed but bare, the thought that he could if he wanted to--that he could somehow find a boy in a lab, that it could be as simple as their eyes meeting across the room, as a wink in a doorway, as an invitation to come back for more--is the tiniest bit fantastic in a nonsensical kind of way. 

Because even though he knows he won’t pursue this particular boy, even though he doesn’t want the distraction, the attachment right now, someday, with another boy in another time and another place, maybe.

Maybe.


	5. Age 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5 prompt:  
> Snowman

A peek around the corner--still nothing. Sherlock checks his watch again.

_He’s late._

He pulls the sides of his coat tighter around him in nervous habit and leans back into the shadows gathered at the mouth of the alleyway.

Across the street, a couple walks by hand-in-hand. _Early 20s. He works in the financial district. She does something where she’s on her feet all day, waitress perhaps. Retail? No, the proud sculpt of her spine, the delicate turn-out of her feet--dancer. Bottle of wine in the bag in her free hand. Poshest dress she owns. On their way to Christmas dinner then. Her first time meeting his family._

Family.

The thought of it turns Sherlock’s stomach sour, and he looks away.

Mummy had asked him to come home, of course. Asked. Prodded. Demanded. Suggested. She’d hit all of the cornerstones, running the gamut from practically pleading to refusing to speak to him to laying on the guilt thick and heavy. But still Sherlock had refused.

Home is the last place he wants to spend Christmas this year.

Footsteps approach the cramped alley where he’s hiding, and Sherlock steps farther back into the darkness, letting it swallow him whole. A spectre in tatty denims and an oversized football kit materialises at the entrance and follows him into the shadows.

“You’re late, Frank,” Sherlock says when they’re far enough from the street.

“‘ey, keep it down, would ya? How many times I gotta tell ya, it’s Snowman.”

 _What a stupidly obvious name for a dealer,_ Sherlock thinks for the twentieth time. It’s a ridiculous charade anyway. They both know that Sherlock is never going to call him that.

“You’re not my only client, you know. Had a whole party to supply out in the West End--toff bastards couldn’t make up their minds how much they wanted. Had to make a second trip out there.”

“Don’t care. Did you bring it?” His fingers twitch against the hem of his coat, the familiar, anticipatory thrill tingling in his fingertips.

Frank fidgets, swallows, drops his gaze to somewhere around Sherlock’s knees. _Bad news then._ “I’m out,” he says to the pavement. Sherlock bristles-- _after all this waiting, he shows up empty-handed_ \--and Frank raises a placating hand between them. “It’s the holidays. Everybody want to escape. All I got left are Christmas trees if you want ‘em.”

Barbiturates aren’t amongst Sherlock’s usual drugs of choice, but he needs something tonight. Something to take the edge off the sorrow. Something to help him sleep. It’ll work for now.

“Fine,” he says, already digging into his pocket for his wallet when Frank clears his throat.

“It’s, uh, it’s gonna cost you double the usual though.”

Sherlock balks. “Double?”

“Well, supply and demand and all that.” Frank says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Come on, I got a kid to feed.”

Sherlock considers punching him. He considers the three and a half stone that Frank has on him and whether or not he could win that fight. He considers walking away, finding someone else who has what he needs for the right price--a difficult endeavour on Christmas Eve to be sure, but certainly not an impossibility. He considers his empty flat. He considers the invitation home that he’d refused. He considers the one person who had long made all those big holiday gatherings bearable, the fresh grave behind a tiny church in Normandy, the goodbye he didn’t get to say, the last tiny bit of Christmas magic to which he’d clung, gone out of the world now that Grandmere is gone, too.

“Just give it to me.”

He passes over double the notes with shaking hands. He won’t have enough left to cover all of the rent now, but he’ll figure something out. He always does.

“Ta. Merry Christmas,” Frank says, making the exchange, and Sherlock glares at him until he disappears back into the night.

Alone again, Sherlock pulls a biro and a slip of paper from his inner pocket. A quick scribble, and then he swallows the pills down and steps out onto the pavement.

The walk home is short, but his feet already feel heavy by the time he makes it to the final corner. All he wants, all he needs is the comfort of his own bed and the ignorant bliss that will come with sleep.

He stumbles over his too-slow feet, catching himself on his hands and knees, tiny rocks on the pavement cutting into his palms. Blood trickles out, sluggish and dark, and he watches it, fascinated and horrified and numb in turns, wishing someone would come and wipe it away.

But there’s no one there with a wet flannel and an understanding word. Not anymore.

What there is, however, is a hand under his elbow, lifting him to his feet. _That’s good,_ he thinks. He needs to stand to get to his bedroom after all. His flat is right there, and he just needs to lie down for a while.

But the hand guides him toward the open back door of a black sedan, and it takes Sherlock far too long to realise what that means.

He tries to focus on the vaguely Mycroft-shaped man ushering him toward the car. “What are you doing here?”

 _Did that come out indignant?_ He hopes so. That’s what he was aiming for.

The blurry Mycroft blob rolls its eyes--or so Sherlock thinks, he isn’t quite certain--and Sherlock wrenches his arm free from its grasp. “No, I’m going home.”

He spins around, trying to find his front door, but it gets lost in the dizzying cycle of door-pavement-car-pavement-door-pavement-car. Thankfully though, someone’s there to help guide him, seizing him by the arm and ushering him toward his-- no wait-- away from his flat.

“I want to go to bed,” Sherlock slurs at his captor.

“You can,” says the voice that sounds strangely like his brother’s. “Just get in the car.”

Sherlock doesn’t want to get in the car. Somewhere deep down he knows that getting in the car is Not Good, but the back seat looks an awful lot like a place to lie down and he just wants to sleep and forget about everything else.

A hand on his head keeps him from bumping it against the frame, and another comes along to lift his feet off the pavement and into the car--a monumental task surely, as each shoe weighs almost as much as his eyelids do now.

Somewhere in the distance a car door closes and then another.

There’s a hand in his pocket and then a name that sounds like his own, the voice behind it infected with familiar disappointment.

The feeling of falling.

A cushioned impact.

A pillow that feels an awful lot like flesh and bone.

A hand against his brow. A hand pressing into the pulse point below his jaw. A hand tainted by the sickening scent of Mycroft’s cologne.

“You’re the worst big brother in the world,” Sherlock mumbles as the hand moves to stroke at his hair.

At the edge of sleep, he hears a faraway sigh.

“I know,” a voice says, heavy with regret. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com).


End file.
